Functions of Operations Management

The assignment is focused on understanding the functions of operations management, including planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It also examines leadership qualities such as vision, integrity, and communication skills. Additionally, it discusses corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how company culture can impact CSR initiatives. Examples from General Motors are provided to illustrate these concepts.

Higher Nationals
Assignment Brief – BTEC (RQF)
Higher National Diploma in Business
Student Name Georgiana Aura Pavel ID 07992
Unit Number and Title Unit 04– Management and Operations
Academic Year 2019-2020 Cohort Sept 19 Block 3
Unit Leader Rahima Kahtoon Assessor Alfred Agyeman
Assignment Title
Part 1: Leadership and Management Concepts
Part 2: Leaders and Operations Management
Issue Date 25/11/2019
Submission Start Date (Formative) 07/02/2020
Submission date (Summative) 21/02/2020
IV Name Sean Barrett
IV Date 21/11/2019

Contents
Differentiate between the role of a leader and the function of a manager............1
Leadership styles......................................................................................... 1
Manager and Management............................................................................2
Roles of a Leader and a Manager.................................................................4
Comparation between characteristics of a Leader and that of a
Manager............................................................................................................ 5
Role of a leader and the function of a manager....................................................6
Role of a Leader.............................................................................................. 6
Function of a Manager................................................................................... 7
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory..................................................................................... 8
Strengths and weaknesses of Fiedler’s Contingency Theory............................10
Sources................................................................................................................ 10
A difference between the role of a manager and the
function of a leader
Leadership is about developing surroundings where humans consistently carry out to
the best of their capability.
Leadership is the potential to steer behaviour of others. It is also defined as the capacity to
influence a group towards the realisation of a goal. Leaders are required to
develop future visions, and to inspire the organisational contributors to need to obtain the
visions. (Juneja, 2019)
According to Keith Davis, “Leadership is the potential to influence others to are trying to
find defined objectives enthusiastically. It is the human factor which binds a
group together and motivates it in the direction of goals.” (Juneja, 2019)
Leadership styles
There is not any single "right" style of leadership. Brilliant leaders understand that there are
several types of management which can be all appropriate at distinctive times and
for different people.
There are three basic leadership styles - autocratic, laissez-faire and shared leadership.
(Cooper, 2011)

A leader is the one in charge, the person that convinces other people to follow. Leader is
that man or woman who lead a group to achieve a purpose and influencing them to offer all
their best that have. A great leader inspires confidence and trust to others and make them to
work for achievement. (Anon, 2020)
To be a remarkable exquisite leader you want to be many things. You want to be a
chameleon, adapting your fashion as and while the wishes of your human beings and the state
of affairs dictate.
Manager and Management
A manager is someone who is responsible for part of a company, they ‘manage‘ the
company. Managers can be in charge of a department and the folks who work in it.
In some cases, the manager is in rate of the entire business. For example, a ‘eating
place manager’ is in price of the whole eating place.
A supervisor is someone who sporting activities managerial features primarily. They need
to have the strength to hire, fire, discipline, do overall performance appraisals,
and display attendance. They should also have the electricity to approve overtime and
authorise vacations. He or she is the boss. (Market Business News, 2019)
Management is a wonderful ongoing system of allocating inputs of an corporation (human
and monetary resources) by using traditional managerial functions (planning, organising,
directing and controlling) for the purpose of achieving stated objectives, viz., output of
products and services favoured through its customers (environment).
In the procedure, work is completed with and through employees of the organisation in an
ever-changing commercial enterprise environment. (Diksha, 2020)
Thanks to scientists like Henri Fayol (1841-1925) the first foundations had been laid
for current scientific control. These first concepts, also called concepts of control are the
underlying elements for successful management. Henri Fayol explored this comprehensively
and, as a result, he synthesised the 14 concepts of control.
14 principles of Management are statements which might be primarily based on
an essential truth. These concepts of management serve as a guiding principle for decision-
making and control actions. (Vliet, 2019) The 14 principles of Management are:
Division of Work
Authority and Responsibility
Discipline
Unity of Command
Unity of Direction
Subordination of Individual Interest
Remuneration
The Degree of Centralisation
Scalar Chain

Order
Equity
Stability of Tenure of Personnel
Initiative
Esprit de Corps
(Vliet, 2019)
Roles of a Leader and a Manager
There are critical distinctions between managing and leading people. Bellow the
writer suggests what’s are the difference between leader and supervisor role. (Arruda, 2019)
Leaders create an imaginative and prescient, managers create goals.
Leaders paint an image of what they see
as possible and encourage and interact their humans in turning that vision into reality.
Managers attention on setting, measuring and reaching goals.
Leaders are change agents; managers hold the fame quo.
Leaders are proud disruptive. Innovation is their mantra. Managers stay with what works,
refining systems, systems and procedures to cause them to better.
Leaders are managers copy.
Leaders are inclined to be themselves. They are self-aware and paintings actively
to construct their and differentiated non-public brand. Managers mimic the competencies and
behaviours they analyse from others and adopt their leadership style instead of defining it.
Leaders take risks, managers control risk.
Leaders are willing to attempt new things even if they will fail miserably. They know that
failure is usually a step on the course to success. Managers paintings to minimise risk.
They are seeking to keep away from or manipulate problems rather than embracing them.
Leaders are in it for the long haul, managers assume short-term.
Leaders have intentional. They do what they say they are going to do
and stay motivated closer to a big, regularly very remote goal. Managers work on shorter-
term goals, in search of more regular acknowledgement or accolades.
Leaders develop personally, managers depend upon existing, tested skills.
Leaders understand if they aren’t mastering something new every day, they aren’t status still,
they’re falling behind. Managers frequently double down on what made them successful,
perfecting existing skills and adopting verified behaviours.
Leaders coach, managers direct.
Leaders recognize that folks that paintings for them have the solutions or are capable
of discover them. Managers assign duties and offer guidance on how to perform them.
(Arruda, 2019)

Characteristics of a Leader and Manager
Leadership and management are terms which might be frequently used
interchangeably inside the enterprise international to depict someone who manages a team of
people. In truth management vs. management have very exceptional meanings. To be
a good supervisor you must understand what it takes to additionally be an outstanding leader.
(Reynolds, 2020)
Leader Manager
Courage: There are two styles
of courage: physical and ethical.
Leadership individual requires
moral courage.
Honesty
When in business honesty is
key and in my candidates I
specifically look for the
importance of openness and
transparency
Caring:
Caring method showing honest
hobby in and real challenge for
others. It consists of consideration,
compassion, empathy, sympathy,
and nurturing.
Communication skills
Great managers have excellent
communication skills.
Sense of humour: This is the
tendency to take
the maximum hopeful
and joyful view and
to anticipate the fine outcome.
Confidence
Managers have to be confident
in their decision
Creativity: Leaders
must choose what they will do
and no longer do and then take
delivery of the outcomes in
their choices
Responsibility
Good managers recognise that t
hey are in control, that is, they a
re responsible for the results of
all — the successes and failures.
Creativity
Hire a manager with a knack out
side the box to dream and come
up with innovative ideas.
Role of a leader and the function of a manager

Role of a Leader
General Motors (GM), in full General Motors Company, once General Motors Corporation,
American organization that was the world's biggest engine vehicle maker for a great part of
the twentieth and mid-21st hundreds of years. It works assembling and get together plants
and appropriation focuses all through the United States, Canada, and numerous different
nations. The organization's significant items incorporate autos and trucks, car segments, and
motors, and it is likewise occupied with monetary administrations. GM's base camp are in
Detroit. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020)
Mary Barra is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors Company. She was
chosen Chairman of the GM Board of Directors on January 4, 2016 and has filled in as CEO
of GM since January 15, 2014.
Under Barra's authority, GM imagines a world with zero accidents, to spare lives; zero
discharges, so people in the future can acquire a more beneficial planet; and zero clog, so
clients get back a valuable item – time.
Major Product/ Service Launch
She's cantered around fortifying GM's centre business of extraordinary autos, trucks and
hybrids, while additionally attempting to lead the change of individual portability through
trend setting innovations like availability, jolt, self-governing driving and vehicle sharing.
Barra has likewise settled a vital course dependent on putting the client at the focal point of
everything the organization does.
Preceding turning out to be CEO, Barra filled in as official VP, Global Product Development,
Purchasing and Supply Chain since August 2013, and as senior VP, Global Product
Development since February 2011. In these jobs, Barra and her groups were answerable for
the structure, designing and nature of GM vehicle dispatches around the world. (Gm.com,
2020)
Conflict Management- Disturbance Handling
Soon after Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors in 2014, she was confronted with an
emergency including a lethal glitch in more seasoned vehicles.
She redid the organization's way of life and the executive’s forms, which won back trust from
shoppers.
Barra said the experience instructed her to be eager about taking care of issues and to urge
representatives and administrators to be straightforward with one another. (Feloni, 2018)
Only days subsequent to taking the activity in January 2014, General Motors CEO Mary
Barra needed to face an emergency that undermined the whole organization's post-
government bailout future.
As of late, at the 2018 New York Times Deal Book Conference, Barra told the Times'
Andrew Ross Sorkin that the experience changed her authority style, and thus changed GM's
way of life. "I've gotten significantly more fretful about how we get things done and how
rapidly we get things done," she said. (Feloni, 2018)
Barra is a GM lifer and went through 33 years at the automaker before turning out to be CEO.
In her official jobs prompting the top occupation, she got comfortable with the manners in

which GM's in excess of 200,000 representatives had gotten acquainted with a moderate
moving, excessively entangled culture that Business Insider's Matthew DeBord said, "was
composed for struggle." When Barra was the head of HR in 2009, for instance, she decreased
a 10-page clothing standard into two words, "Dress suitably," enabling directors to decipher
that for their specific group. (Feloni, 2018)
Function of a Manager
A manager is a specialist in their field and is an emotionally supportive network for workers.
Administrators work inside a business and work all together to accomplish organization
objectives. A chief isn't an individual who does a million things on the double while
representatives take a rearward sitting arrangement. It is fundamental for directors to
designate obligations to representatives and help them if they need assistance. (Study.com,
2019)
Function of a Manager:
Planning: Arranging implies deciding an association's objectives and choosing how best to
accomplish them. Basic leadership, a piece of the arranging procedure, includes picking or
choosing a game-plan from a lot of options.
Decision-making: Determining Courses of Action: Basic leadership is looking over elective
game-plans. Arranging is the methods for changing over a thought into a reality that is,
deciding the objectives and goals of the association and the methods for accomplishing them.
Leading (Directing): Motivating and Managing Employees: Administration is required if
hierarchical objectives are to be accomplished. When the association procedure is finished,
all administration needs to do is to allocate various individuals in their jobs. (Shaval, 2019)
Utilization of TQM practices of General Motors Manufacturing Company
General Motors Company is dynamic in recognizable proof and execution of best acts of
TQM that is the reason the organization accomplished that serious age in the worldwide
market this time General Motors Company is the third biggest Motor Manufacturing
Company on the planet. (White, 2019)
Kaizen Approach: this methodology features the day by day action improvement
The term kaizen is a Japanese word received into English alluding to a way of thinking or
practices which thoroughly concentrating on constant improvement in assembling exercises.
Kaizen typically refers to exercises that consistently improve all elements of a business,
kaizen intends to eliminate waste. General Motors is amazingly client centre and persistent
improvement association they try to produce items which can fulfil client's needs and need.
General Motors quality control council is attempting to dispose of day by day base
shortcomings in the creation procedures of the organization and this is the motivation behind
Kaizen approach moreover. They imagine that client is the main column for the organization,
and this is the organization strategic give quality and standard product. (White, 2019)
Constant Improvement: Proceeds with progress is a push to improve items, services, and
generation forms. Persistent improvement underway and administrations forms seek

incremental improvement over the time. The motivation behind Continuous Improvement
Process is the identification, decrease, and disposal of problematic procedures (Efficiency).
(White, 2019)
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
Like all contingency theories, Fiedler's theory of contingency notes that there is no one right
way to lead the team. Instead, condition will determine the best way to lead the team.
It's important to realise that your leadership style is set in Fiedler's Contingency Theory. You
can't change your style to fit out with the situation. Then, you must put leaders in
circumstances that match their styles.
Alright, the more favourably you scored the person you like the least to work with the more
relationship oriented you are, according to the model. The less you have rated the person you
least like to work with the more task-oriented you are. (Expert Program Management, 2018) So,
in a nutshell:
High LPC= Leader focused on relationships.
Low LPC= leader focused to the mission.
a. Leader-Member Relations This aspect tests how much trust the team puts in leader. Greater
confidence increases the favourability of the situation and less confidence decreases it.
b. Task structure This aspect tests the tasks which need to be carried out. Are they either clear
and accurate, or vague?
Vague tasks decrease the favourability of the situation and improve it by concise and
transparent tasks.
c. Role Power This is decided by your power, which means subordinates are to be rewarded
or punished. Having more power increases favourability in the situation. (Expert Program
Management, 2018)

(Exp
ert Program Management, 2018)
Theory applied to Mary Barra – Leader of General Motors Manufactory
Because of its diverse implementation, the pathgoal principle was selected and highlights the
versatility of Mary Barra in leadership. So, first, in situations such as the rapid decrease of the
formal dress code, her demonstration of directive leadership is noticeable. Barra created a
situation where executives would make their own choices and use their own judgement. She
instructed the managers who protested about this policy to address their concerns with their
employees and to collaborate to address the problem. As mentioned earlier, when it comes to
inclusive leadership. She shows great regard for the needs of her employees, engages them in
decision-making, supports her team in interviews, also mentions the people who work for
General Motors while thinking about the company's performance. The third pillar of the
concept of the trajectory-goal is achievement-oriented leadership that Mary displays in her
never-ending quest to do better; make better cars and never stop improving. In the end,
participatory leadership is the one that best describes the style of Mary Barra. Her decision to
hire the most capable and skilled team members helps her to use participatory leadership as
she inspires the members of her team and appreciates their attributes that contribute to team
success. Barra has a strong belief that everybody wants to do a good job and contribute.
(Stanisic, 2018)

Strengths and weaknesses of Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
According to Northouse the principle of contingency has many strengths. One is it's an
efficient way of describing how to achieve a good leadership. Science is very confirmed and
sponsored. Another strength lies in how it broadens leadership awareness and binds leaders to
circumstances. The third strength is that the theory helps predict which kind of leadership
would be successful in which scenario and what rate of success somebody would have in
each situation. The next strength is that, in every case, it does not need a leader to be
successful. This argues that in every case, a leader will not be ideal. The final strength is that
the theory gives information about types of leaders that would be helpful in shaping the
leader and their image. (Blogs.baylor.edu, 2015)
While contingency theory has many strengths, so are flaws and criticisms as well. The first li
mitation is that in some circumstances the principle of contingency doesn't completely explai
n why some people are more effective leaders but not in others. Conservatives often use that t
o contradict the argument. The LPC scale is yet another limitation. People often don't
understand why someone else's explanation asks them about their leadership style. On the
surface it doesn't make much sense, but the reaction becomes apparent when studied deeper.
Most who see their least preferred co-worker in a quite negative way are motivated by the
challenge because they see that individual as the weakest link in the path to their objective.
The people who see their least favoured coworker as supportive do so because they need to
establish a good bond with them. The final drawback is that the theory does not specify what
to do with a leader is put into a position with which they match. It does not answer the way
leaders are taught how to change. (Blogs.baylor.edu, 2015)

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